Ireland has been ranked sixth in a new Oxfam developed league table of the world’s worst corporate tax havens.

Oxfam branded the Republic the sixth-worst country for helping corporations to avoid paying billions of euros in tax bills each year.

The development agency said profit-shifting, sweetheart deals and a lack of effective tax rules influenced the damning score.

Jim Clarken, CEO of the charity’s Irish division, said the country is part of a toxic global system that services the very wealthiest while ordinary people pay the price and lose out on essential public services.

“Around the world, we are known as a country of good fun, bad weather and awful tax policies that allow some of the world’s richest companies to avoid paying their fair share,” he said. “This is no badge of honour.”

How many of us really know what is going on in our coastal communities, asks director of The Pipe, Risteard Ó Domhnaill.

WE VISIT THEM on our summer holidays. We like to see boats coming and going from piers and to eat seafood in local restaurants. We imagine what a great life the locals must have. But the reality for coastal communities is as far from the imagined maritime idyll as Newfoundland is from Kilmore Quay.

THE Corrib Partners are generating sales of more than €1.2m a day from the gas flowing from the Corrib gas field off the Co Mayo coast.

Production started on the field at the end of last year and for the first nine months of this year the Corrib Partners, including Shell Ireland, recorded estimated revenues of $360m (€335m) from the production of gas from the field.

This follows a new report by one of the Corrib partners, Canadian-based Vermilion showing that it has generated sales of $66.42m (€61.5m) for the first nine months of production.

Today (10th November) marks the 10th anniversary of the baton charge by Gardaí against peaceful protestors opposed to the Shell/Corrib Gas Project in Erris, north Mayo. [1]

The 10th of November 2006 was chosen by the Shell to Sea campaign as a suitable day of action as it marked the anniversary of the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa and 8 other Ogoni activists who opposed Shell in Nigeria.

In 2007, following the baton charge and other incidents in which people were injured, GSOC sought to do a "policies and practices" investigation into the policing of Shell/Corrib protests. However, the then Minister for Justice Brian Lenihan denied GSOC permission to carry out this investigation. As the 2010 Frontline report stated this created "the impression that the State does not want the Garda Síochána held properly to account over the policing of the Corrib dispute". [2]

Amanda Slevin’s study of our energy policy pre- and post-Corrib is a must for policymakers

Dismantling a section of the Corrib gas line at Aughoose, Co Mayo. When Seán Lemass signed the State’s first exploration agreement in 1959, the Irish subsidiary of Messman-Rinehart was given exclusive rights to both onshore and offshore drilling – for a sum of £500. Photographer: Dara Mac Dónaill

Mohammad Mossadegh may have had no illusions about the dark side of black gold when he nationalised Iran’s oil industry in 1951. Iran had been the first Middle Eastern state to permit hydrocarbon extraction, and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later known as British Petroleum, had enjoyed the sole concession there since 1913.

“With the oil revenues, we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people,” Mossadegh, Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, explained to the people. “By the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced.”

Within two years , Mossadegh had been overthrown in a coup organised by the CIA at the request of Britain’s MI6. He was kept under house arrest until his death in 1967.

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Blast from the Past

Garda whistleblower Maurice McCabe’s first contact with a TD came about because he saw Clare Daly TD on ‘Tonight with Vincent Browne’ talking about policing of Corrib Gas protests, writes William Hederman

The repercussions for Garda whistleblowers Maurice McCabe and John Wilson will be familiar to others who have publicly embarrassed An Garda Síochána. They were clearly acting in the public interest, but their revelations brought the force into disrepute, and the two men suffered as a result. Revenge was exacted – not only by colleagues, but also by way of public denunciation by the Garda Commissioner (“disgusting”), the Minister for Justice (“not co-operating”) and by various other parties loyal to the force.

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"The Corrib licence was granted under an older licensing system. No royalties are payable, just corporation tax of 25pc less any allowances that the companies enjoy. That system was completely flawed and yet again we find that there are only marginal returns for taxpayers from new gas finds."